1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for generating reports that integrate values from databases and include quality management information, and more particularly to systems and methods for generating pathology reports with sufficient quality management to meet required standards.
2. Description of the Related Art
Producing reports by longhand can be a tedious, time-consuming production. Inventions such as shorthand and dictation with transcription shortened the amount of time required to generate reports.
Dictation software such as Dragon's Naturally Speaking and IBM's Via Voice have evolved to include advanced versions that allow for limited command control functionality such as Via Voice's macro commands and voice commands. Not only is the data from the report transcribed by the software, but also the software has a limited ability to allow the user to dictate commands to the software so the software can provide formatting or move around within the text without any intervention by the user.
In the modern world standards, regulations, and often statutes require certain amounts of quality assurance or quality control of various reports that affect people's lives. Typical quality assurance requirements sampling five or ten percent of the total number of reports that are generated to determine if the reports are being properly generated. Any sampling scheme requires that the sample be chosen carefully so that it is representative of the original population, here the total number of reports generated.
Starting about 1990, pathologists started using computer dictation software to generate reports. The general problem with using dictation software, or the dictation in general that the software replaced, was that useful quality assurance reports were difficult and time consuming to generate.
It would be advantageous to have a system and method of generating reports that provided better quality management than those currently available.